


Realization Dawning

by sahiya



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, keeping secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter starts to put things together. Spoilers up through 5x03.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Realization Dawning

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this appears to be my season for episode tags! Many thanks to Fuzzyboo for beta reading.
> 
> One small note: Please be careful with leaving spoilers for future episodes in your reviews. Not everyone watches the show on Thursday night when it airs; I get the episodes via Amazon, so I'm always delayed by a day. Thanks!

Peter had seen more than his share of dead bodies. Fewer than the agents in organized crime, to be sure, but not all white collar criminals had Neal Caffrey’s aversion to guns and violence. But even if it wasn’t Peter’s first rodeo, there was something particularly awful about seeing David Seigel’s body. 

It was such a _waste_ , Peter thought, looking down at it. Seigel had been so young and so promising an agent. He’d been a nice guy, too, and Peter had looked forward to getting to know him and to watching him and Neal grow as a team. Now, all of that potential was just _gone_ , snuffed out by some asshole with a gun.

There wasn’t much for Peter to do at the scene. NYPD was handling the case. Peter spoke to the officer in charge and wrangled a promise from her that she’d keep the FBI in the loop on the investigation and let them know if it looked like it was anything other than a mugging gone wrong. Peter shook her hand and then came back to stand beside Neal, who was still staring at Seigel’s body as though he couldn’t look away. 

“Come on,” Peter said, touching Neal’s elbow. “Let’s go.”

Neal was quiet on the walk back to the car. But it wasn’t until they were both inside that Peter realized how white Neal had gone. 

“Hey,” Peter said, turning to really look at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Neal said, not looking at him. His voice was faint. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

 _Really? Because you look like you’re going to pass out._ Peter kept his mouth shut, knowing it wouldn’t help. He had hoped Neal might have some light to shed on what Seigel might’ve been doing in the area, but now he wondered if it had been such a good idea, bringing Neal down here. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I know you guys were getting along. This is a huge shock.”

“You can say that again,” Neal murmured. 

Peter started the car. “I’m going to take you home, all right? You don’t need to come back to the office today.”

Neal nodded. Peter pulled away from the curb and headed uptown, toward June’s house. The rain continued to fall, and its steady drum on the roof of the car and the quiet swish of the wipers were the only noises to be heard. Neal was silent, holding his hat in his hands. 

Peter found a parking space just down the street from June’s. Neal blinked, seeming to come back to himself from wherever he’d been. “You don’t have to come in,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“Just for a few minutes,” Peter said. “Jones can handle things back at the office.”

Neal nodded. It was far less of an argument than Peter had expected, which made him more certain than ever that it was the right decision. He’d expected Neal to be shaken up; he was shaken up himself. But he hadn’t expected this weird sort of fugue state.

Neal’s apartment was gray and gloomy from the rain. Neal shed his jacket, then stood at the windows, looking out at it. Peter thought about making coffee or trying to get Neal to eat something, but instead he stood silently by the door, watching the rigid lines of Neal’s back. 

“Excuse me,” Neal said after a moment, and turned, striding quickly - too quickly - down the hallway. Peter hesitated and then followed more slowly, keeping his footsteps as even and quiet as possible. 

He didn’t get far. He’d barely set foot in the hallway when he was pulled up short by the sound of Neal vomiting. He hovered, hesitating, before he finally retreated back to the main room. For lack of anything else to do, he filled Neal’s tea kettle, which was sitting out on the stove, and started making tea. 

It was steeping by the time Neal emerged, even paler than before and a bit damp around the edges, as though he’d splashed water on his face. Peter handed him a cup of tea without commentary and gently maneuvered him into sitting down at the table. He retrieved his own mug and seated himself just across from Neal, close but not too close. 

“It’s strange,” Peter said after letting several minutes go by in silence. “I’ve known other agents who’ve died, but there’s always been a case. After a while, you make peace with the idea that it _could_ happen to you. But you don’t expect it to happen . . . randomly.”

It took Neal a moment to answer. “You think it was random?” he said, looking at Peter. “You really think it was just that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Peter looked at Neal sharply. There was something in his voice that made Peter think that question was more than rhetorical. “NYPD thinks it was,” Peter said, carefully. “Do you disagree?”

Neal looked out the window, his cooling tea neglected between his hands. “I don’t know.” 

Peter let the silence stretch. “Neal,” he said quietly, at long last, “if you know something - if you think you know something - you should tell me.”

Neal shook his head. His head was slightly bowed, his shoulders slightly hunched. This was more than shock and grief for a guy Neal had only known a few days. Something else was happening here, Peter was certain. But what that might be, he didn’t know. 

He did know that, handler or not, he couldn’t leave Neal alone like this. 

“El has a late client meeting tonight,” Peter said, getting up to put both mugs in the sink. “She won’t be home for a while yet. I thought I’d wait out the worst of rush hour, if it’s okay with you.”

Neal shrugged without so much as glancing in Peter’s direction. Peter decided that was probably the best he was going to do. 

By eight o’clock, Neal was looking a little bit better. Peter had ordered out for Chinese food; Neal had mostly picked at it, but at least now there was food in his fridge for later. El had texted him that she was on her way home, and Peter knew that he should be headed in that direction as well. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, deeply wrong, and he didn’t want to leave Neal alone. 

He was still hemming and hawing about leaving when there was a knock at the door in iambic pentameter. “That’s Moz,” Neal said, stirring from his seat at the table to answer the door. 

For once, Peter was glad to see him. “Hey, Mozzie,” he said, standing. 

“Suit,” Mozzie greeted, raising his eyebrows. He glanced from Peter to Neal and back again. “Is this a social call or are you here in your role as chief oppressor?”

Peter gave him a look. “We had some bad news this afternoon,” he said. “David Seigel is dead.”

Mozzie’s mouth dropped open. “Suit 2.0? What happened?”

“It looks like a mugging,” Peter said, and couldn’t help looking at Neal as he said it. Neal didn’t react, at least not that Peter could see. “Sheer bad luck.”

“I see,” Mozzie said. He was also looking at Neal, Peter noticed, at least until he noticed Peter noticing. 

“Anyway, I should be going now,” Peter said, gathering up his coat and his umbrella. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Neal, all right?” Neal nodded. Peter hesitated, glancing toward Mozzie. The urge to say something was strong: _If something is wrong, really wrong, you know you can come to me, right?_ But that wasn’t really true - or at least, it _shouldn’t_ be true. Peter had overlooked a lot in his time as Neal’s handler, but if Neal was involved in something that’d led to the death of an agent . . . 

Peter couldn’t imagine that he was. He couldn’t imagine that Neal would ever get himself involved in that kind of crime. 

In the end, he said nothing. He looked at Mozzie, and the two of them exchanged a glance and a nod. Mozzie would look after Neal now. Relieved despite himself, Peter left. 

His commute was indeed much faster than usual, but El still beat him home. She greeted him at the door with a kiss. “Long day at the office?” she asked sympathetically, in response to his tired, “Hi, hon.”

Peter shook his head. “Agent Seigel is dead.”

Eizabeth pulled back to look at him, eyes wide. “Neal’s new handler?” Peter nodded. “My God, what happened?”

Peter pulled away from her, reluctantly, to go into the kitchen. He wanted a beer more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. “NYPD says it was a mugging gone wrong. But something about it just doesn’t make sense, El - we don’t even know how he ended up where he was found. And Neal . . .” Peter shook his head and pulled a beer from the fridge before straightening to face El again. She leaned against the kitchen island, eyes dark and serious. “I knew it’d be upsetting to him. He hadn’t known Seigel all that long, but they’d started to build a real rapport. But you should’ve seen him, El. He was white as a sheet.” 

El frowned. “Is that where you’ve been, then?”

Peter nodded. “Handler or not, I couldn’t leave him alone. I left when Moz showed up.” He took a long sip from his beer. “El, something wasn’t right. I have no proof, no proof at all, but my gut is screaming at me that something is wrong. It’s been telling me that for days, but I’ve been ignoring it. I told myself it was just all the changes that were happening, that I was feeling uncomfortable about not being the one out in the field with Neal anymore. But I don’t think that’s it. I really don’t.”

El crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you think it is?”

Peter shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it feels like it started with our first case after I came back, the one with the gold coins. I think Neal stole those gold coins, and I can’t figure out why. Nothing’s been right since then. And if Neal is involved somehow in this - in the murder of an agent -”

“He wouldn’t be,” El said instantly. “Hon, you know that Neal would never be involved in something like that.”

“Not directly,” Peter said. “But I think he knows more than he’s telling me. And I think - this is going to sound weird, but I think he wanted me to figure it out.”

El bit her lip. “Are you sure it wasn’t just that he was shocked and upset?”

Peter sighed. “You didn’t see him. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him look that bad. Not after Ellen’s death. Maybe not even after Kate’s.”

She nodded, then moved forward to wrap her arms around him. “Well, you said Moz is with him now.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, “and it’s clearly a sign of how bad things have gotten that I was happy to see him.”

El gave a brief laugh, then tightened her arms around Peter. “Sleep on it, all right? Maybe things will be clearer in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Peter sighed. He took another sip of beer. “Maybe.”

Sleeping on it might’ve helped, but sleep didn’t come easily that night. Peter lay awake long after they’d turned out the lights, trying to keep the tossing and turning to minimum for El’s sake. His mind was like a dog with a bone; it couldn’t let the problem go, no matter how hard he tried to tell himself it would keep until morning. Eventually, just after midnight, he gave up and got out of bed. He used the bathroom, and then went back to the bedroom, intending to grab his Kindle and take it downstairs. Maybe if he gave his mind something else to do, it’d eventually calm enough to let him sleep. 

El was awake when he returned from the bathroom, sitting up in bed with her reading lamp throwing warm yellow light over her. “I’m sorry, hon, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Peter said. “I’m just going to go read downstairs for a while.”

“You didn’t wake me,” El said. “And I think we need to talk.”

“Okay,” Peter said slowly, and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “What’s going on?”

El closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Peter. “The day before your hearing, Neal came to see me here at the house. We had coffee, and we talked. He said that it was very important that you not be indicted, because if you were, you’d lose your badge, and he couldn’t let that happen.”

Peter frowned. “And it didn’t.”

“No,” El said, very slowly, “it didn’t. But it wasn’t obvious at that point that it wouldn’t. I told him . . .” She swallowed. “I told him to do whatever he had to do.”

Peter didn’t like where this was going. “What are you saying?”

El looked at him. “Peter. Neal and I had that conversation and twenty-four hours later, there was a recording of James Bennet’s confession that single-handedly set you free. It’s possible he was keeping it from me in case it didn’t work, but I could swear that Neal had no idea that recording existed when he came and talked to me.” She swallowed. “I told Neal to do whatever he had to do. And I think he did.”

Peter stared at her. “You think the recording was a fake?”

“I don’t know,” El said. “I didn’t ask any questions about it. Did you?”

“No,” Peter said. Normally he would have. _Where did you get it? Did you find James? How did you convince him to do the right thing?_ But Peter hadn’t asked any of those questions. He’d wanted to close that awful chapter in his life and move on, as quickly as possible. And, well . . . if Neal _had_ done something illegal to obtain it, he hadn’t wanted to know. Besides: “They must have authenticated it. They wouldn’t admit something like that into evidence without confirming it was real.”

El looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “That’s what I told myself, too. Justice prevailed, and I should just be happy and not question it. But now I’m not so sure. You said it yourself - Neal doesn’t steal without a reason.” She shook her head, looking up at Peter again. “I’m not saying it all makes sense to me, and I don’t want to believe any of it. But I couldn’t not say anything, not after - after Agent Seigel.” 

Peter reached over and took her hand. “Hon, even if Neal _did_ do something he shouldn’t have to get that recording, it doesn’t mean that it has anything to do what happened to Agent Seigel. NYPD thinks it was a mugging.”

El frowned. “But you don’t think that. Not really.”

“No,” Peter admitted, slowly, “not really. But we don’t know that it’s all related. We can’t make that leap based on what evidence we have. Neal and Seigel had active cases, it could’ve easily been related to one of those.”

She nodded. “You’re right. I know you’re right. But . . .”

“But something doesn’t feel right,” Peter said. “I know the feeling.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Thank you for telling me. I have something to go on now, at least.” It wasn’t much, and he wasn’t at all sure he was going to like he found if he did start digging. But if Agent Seigel’s death hadn’t been random after all, if Neal _was_ somehow involved, then he needed to figure out what the hell was going on before anyone else got hurt.

His conversation with El hadn’t helped his insomnia any. He took his Kindle and went downstairs, but instead of reading, he found himself on his laptop, checking Neal’s tracking data. Neal was at home, but it seemed that he wasn’t asleep either. The blue dot was moving back and forth in front of the windows. Pacing, Peter thought. 

He reached for his cell phone. 

“Peter?” Neal said, when he answered. “What are you doing up?”

“Thinking,” Peter said. 

“About what?” Neal asked, sounding weary but willing to go along.

“You,” Peter said, honestly. “I’m worried about you, Neal. I think something’s wrong, I think it’s been wrong since I got out of prison, and I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

There was a brief silence, then Neal sighed, very softly. “It isn’t your job to worry about me.”

“Well, at the moment, it is,” Peter said. “But even if it weren’t - you were right the other day, we aren’t partners anymore. But we are friends. Aren’t we?” he added, unable to help himself. 

“Yes,” Neal said quietly. “We are.”

“Then as your friend, if you have a problem, I want to help you. I’ll figure it out on my own eventually, you know I will, but I really wish you’d just tell me what was wrong.”

“I can’t,” Neal said. 

“Why not?”

Neal’s voice was so quiet that Peter almost couldn’t hear him. “Because it would hurt you.”

Peter was thoroughly sick of people trying to protect him by withholding information from him. “And keeping me in the dark will protect me? Tell me, Neal - did it protect Agent Seigel?”

Neal drew in a sharp breath. “Peter, please. I can’t. I _can’t._ ”

“Neal -”

“Good night, Peter.”

The call disconnected. 

“No luck?” El said softly from the stairs. He turned to see her in her robe and bare feet, hovering on the bottom step. 

“No,” Peter said, as she padded over and slid her arms around his shoulders from behind, resting her head in the crook of his neck. “He won’t talk to me at all. He said it would hurt me.”

El slid around to sit beside him. “What are you going to do?”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do. Things are going to be a mess for a while. I can use that as an excuse to bench Neal, keep him in the office where I can see him. But that doesn’t help with what he might get up to after hours.” He drew a deep breath. “I think . . . I think I just have to hope that when he needs to, he’ll come to me.”

“Do you think he will?”

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t know.”

Neither of them spoke or moved for a moment. Finally El stood. She pressed her lips to the top of Peter’s head. “Come to bed, hon,” she said quietly. “Let’s try and both get at least a few hours of sleep, all right?”

Peter nodded and stood, following her upstairs. She went to use the bathroom, while Peter lay down again. But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. He reached for his phone and typed, _Please be careful._ Then he sent it before he could think about it too hard.

He didn’t think Neal would respond. But after a minute or two, his phone buzzed. Neal had replied, _I will be. Thanks, Peter._

That would have to be enough, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, Peter promised himself, he would start to figure everything else out - and he _would_ eventually, as he’d told Neal. But there was nothing to be done now, not when Neal was clearly distraught and not thinking clearly, not when Peter was in desperate need of sleep. Tomorrow, he thought, and forced himself to close his eyes. Tomorrow.

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Please no spoilers in reviews! At least not until Saturday, November 9th, let's say. Thank you!


End file.
